1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for forming barrier ribs of a panel used for a flat panel display such as a plasma display and an organic electroluminescence (EL) display.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, barrier ribs are formed on a rear panel used for a plasma display by various methods. Among methods for forming barrier ribs, a sandblast method, a screen-printing method, a lift-off method and the like are well known, and a method of forming barrier ribs by discharging rib material from a nozzle is recently proposed (e.g., in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Gazette No. 9-92134).
On the other hand, in a panel of a plasma display, luminescent areas and non-luminescent areas ares provided alternately in an area between the barrier ribs. Then, in order to narrow the interval between the barrier ribs in the non-luminescent area, a technique of forming barrier ribs each of waveform by the sandblast method is also proposed.
In a method of discharging rib material from a nozzle (hereinafter, referred to as “nozzle method”), conventionally, since a pitch of the nozzles and that of the barrier ribs coincide with each other, a lot of nozzles need to travel in a straight line with respect to the substrate and only linear (stripe-shaped) barrier ribs can be formed. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce the non-luminescent area which does not contribute to light emission and to improve the luminance of the plasma display.